Universal Iconography in Writing Systems: Evidence and Explanation in the Easter Island and Indus Valley Scripts

Iconography has played a central role in the development of writing systems. That all independently derived ancient scripts began as arrangements of pictograms before evolving into their elaborated forms evinces the fundamental importance of iconography in the evolution of writing. Symbols of the earliest logographic writing systems are characterized by a number of iconographic principles. Elucidation of these iconographic principles provides a theoretical framework for the analysis of stru...